Photography, Imaging, 3D and 3D Printing

Archive for December, 2013

The Photoshop CC Generator is a flexible, and easily customisable JavaScript-based platform with rich APIs and powerful capabilities. It has been designed to take layers from your Photoshop document and automatically create individual image assets (GIF, PNG, or JPG) on the folder system of your operating system. Photoshop CC Generator supports Layers, Layer Groups and Smart Objects.

Getting started

You are able to control if generator is available for use, by enabling/disabling it inside the preferences panel directly inside Photoshop CC.

Generator will be available within Photoshop from, menu item, Generate > Image Assets. Once Generator is enabled it will run in the background and automatically create the assets when required.

For each Layer, Layer Group or Smart Object, you will need to rename each Layer name to an appropriate file name, as well as a file format suffix (.png, .jpg, and/or .gif), this tells Generator how to name the created output asset.

You are also able to control the quantity, size and quality of each asset, as well as different names and formats.

You also able to extend the formats by including % scaling as well as Dimension (n x n, where n denotes width and height). The default scaling will be set to pixels(px), but other units include Inches(in), Centimetres(cm) and millimetres(mm). You are able to use commas “_,_” to create multiple files from a single Group / Layer / Smart Object: N.B each tag must be properly formatted with a valid file extension.

– For saved Photoshop CC files, Generator saves to an asset folder created next to the parent file in the operating system.

– For unsaved Photoshop CC files, Generator saves to a generic assets folder on the desktop.

Saving files is handled automatically by Generator; any changes to Layers / Groups / Smart Objects will be automatically updated in their respective assets. So once Generator is enabled, the assets folder should always be in sync with the original layer. If the assets folder or the parent file is moved, Generator will create a new Assets Folder.

Smart Objects Support

As an example of how the smart objects can be used :-

In this example i am using an Illustrator file, but it could equally be other objects in a Smart Object and embed them into Photoshop CC.

Here is how it looks in Photoshop (Don’t forget, this is a Smart Object, therefore, you can return back to Illustrator CC and modify it at any point in time).

Notice that the layer has been given a name + jpg extension, and Generator is running, therefore the file will be created next to the .PSD file (see Rucksack.jpg below) (as this is a saved file).

If anything happens inside Photoshop, the image will be updated. You can see that by adding a layer style onto the layer a red outline is added.

The respective output asset has now been altered to reflect the change

It may be that other items need to be included, i.e. Layer Groups. You can see in the screen shot below, the image and it’s components are highlighted in Red, and are grouped under a Layer Group. It’s easy to create the assets from this Layer Group by using Photoshop CC Generator, just make sure that the Generator is enabled and the Layer Group is given a name and file type (i.e. FeaturedLocation.jpg), as shown in the following example.

Once Generator has completed, there will be an asset folder next to the original file

However, if the image and in this case just the waves need to be created and the text does not (possibly due to a responsive web layout design), then you can group the appropriate layers, or can use a Smart Object to group them. I’ll use a Smart Object at this point to show the creation of assets on this layer type. The layers have been selected,then the layer fly out menu to choose “Convert to Smart Object” to selected.

Rename the Smart Object Layer

Photoshop Generator kicks into action and creates the final asset in the destination folder.

The final output can be seen in the destination folder

So hopefully you can see that the Photoshop CC Generator is a flexible and very powerful feature, which can be used in many situations (see this video for working with this feature in conjunction with web graphics and Adobe Reflow CC). Also, Photoshop Generator is open source and based on GitHub, so if you feel the urge, you can customise this function, or create your own solution.

Other ideas

Open Source, Interoperable Technology

Photoshop CC Generator is a platform that can enable so much more, which is why we are excited to release the Generator technology platform and the image assets generation feature as open source projects. If you know JavaScript, it’s easy to modify the existing plug-ins or write your own. Check out this video from the The Engine Co., who used Generator to write a plug-in for their Loom gaming engine that allows game designers to change the UI of a game in Photoshop while the game is being played:

A few weeks ago Adobe UK held a series of Ask a Pro webinars. The first was the re-touching session with Tigz Rice (UK Boudoir Photographer). The second was one that I hosted, around the new items in the Creative Cloud Photographers Bundle, comprising of Lightroom 5, Photoshop CC and Pro-site (Pro-site is an extension to the free Behance platform via subscription to the Creative Cloud), as well as publishing your images and content to Behance. It’s a little under an hour of content, as there is so much to cover. In the new year, i’ll be creating more regular shorter pieces on imaging, so here is your chance to ask topics that you would like me to cover, please let me know on the comments of this post.

Are you looking to photograph the Northern Lights this Winter, if so here are some handy tips (apart from wear warm clothes 😉 ! )

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When taking photographs of the Northern lights here are a few things to consider and experiment with.

1. Find a very dark area with no ambient light sneaking in the sky (between mountains is a good start). Near a road can be interesting as you have front and rear light trails to play with. Also, lakes can be amazing as the lights are caught in the reflections.

2. Use a sturdy tripod, if it’s windy you may need to weigh your tripod down to keep it stable.

3. Choose a wide angle lens 35mm of less (full frame, you may need wider if using a cropped sensor).

4. Use fast glass. This is probably the most important one to consider, depending on what you want the results to look like. I.e. If you want the stars in focus, without any trails, then you will need to keep the exposure under 6 or so seconds. To do this, you will need fast glass (F2.0 or below, ideally F1.4 or F1.2).

5. Choose manual focus and set the lens to infinity (usually represented by the infitinity symbol (to small circles joined in the middle).

4. Set the ISO to give you the lowest shutter speed (under 6 seconds or so, determined mostly by point 4), be careful of going to high, remember the higher the ISO the more chance of colour noise in the shadows.

5. If you want star trails, then go over the 6 or so seconds, You can use Tv (time priority) on your camera to apply a restriction on the time, however you may need to use the BULB setting to go over 30 seconds (depending on your camera).

6. I would strongly recommend a locking cable release to start and hold the exposure, or use a 2 second delay with or without mirror lockup mode enabled to reduce the amount of vibration and shake.

7. You may not be able to see anything through the view finder so you will have to guess on what you are shooting, you may also want to block off the view finder, as this could cause light leaks for long exposures.

8. Don’t forget to look around the sky, the Northen Lights are very unpredictable, if there is nothing going on in the front of you, there maybe something going on behind you. Also, if the lights are white in the sky (i.e. not very active (maybe a 2 on the activity scale),don’t panic, the camera will see the vivid colours and will record the different appropriately.

9. For a different effect and breaking rules, try hand holding the camera and go for something shaky. Or maybe zoom into the lights to get a “Zoom effect”

There are also some good sites for planning your shooting activity, after all, you want to be able to maximise your time when in the cold and in the night skit, but also pick the best location for the weather.

Alaskan Aurora Forecast – http://www.gi.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast (this site has a short term forecast as well, as well as different types of maps, depending on where you are).

The Photoshop team released a great new feature called Generator in the November 2013 drop of the application. We know that a lot of people, especially designers use Photoshop for Web designs, as well as other art work that many include images. Traditionally to extract the images. slices would have to be created, as well as a consideration for the resolution of the target device(s). This could be a painful process and very time consuming. The Photoshop Generator, in combination with Adobe ReFlow, re-writes this workflow and has been designed for speed, accuracy and re-use, then combined with the Creative Cloud folder, means that you no longer need to be out of sync.

The video below (created by Iona of the UK Solution Consulting team) demonstrates how this technology can be used and shows the time saving elements as well, based on a real world use case.

If you are not on the Creative Cloud and want to make use of this technology, then you can get Creative Cloud from the following link, or if just Photoshop is what you need, then why not look at the Photography bundle.

Lightroom 5.3 is now available as a final release on Adobe.com and through the update mechanism in Lightroom 5. The goal of this release is to provide additional camera raw support, lens profile support and address bugs that were introduced in previous releases of Lightroom.

Release Notes

Newly added support for Tethered Capture in Lightroom 5.3

Canon EOS Rebel T4i / EOS 650D / EOS Kiss X6i

New Camera Support in Lightroom 5.3

Canon EOS M2

Canon PowerShot S120

Casio EX-10

Fujifilm XQ1

Fujifilm X-E2

Nikon 1 AW1

Nikon Coolpix P7800

Nikon Df

Nikon D610

Nikon D5300

Nokia Lumia 1020

Olympus OM-D E-M1

Olympus STYLUS 1

Panasonic DMC-GM1

Pentax K-3

Phase One IQ260

Phase One IQ280

Sony A7 (ILCE-7)

Sony A7R (ILCE-7R)

Sony DSC-RX10

New Lens Profile Support in Lightroom 5.3

Mount

Name

Apple

Apple iPhone 5s

Canon

Canon EF-M 11-22mm f/4-5.6 IS STM

Canon

Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS STM

Canon

TAMRON SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD A011E

DJI

Phantom Vision FC200

Nikon

Nikon 1 NIKKOR AW 11-27.5mm f/3.5-5.6

Nikon

Nikon 1 NIKKOR AW 10mm f/2.8

Nikon

Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 58mm f/1.4G

Nikon

Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-140mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR

Nikon, Sigma

Sigma 18-35mm F1.8 DC HSM A013

Sony

Sony 16-35mm F2.8 ZA SSM

Sony

Sony 24-70mm F2.8 ZA SSM

Sony

Sony 70-200mm F2.8 G SSM II

Sony

Sony E 16-70mm F4 ZA OSS

Sony

Sony E PZ 18-105mm F4 G OSS

Sony

Sony E 20mm F2.8

Sony

Sony FE 28-70mm F3.5-5.6 OSS

Sony

Sony FE 35mm F2.8 ZA

Sony

Sony FE 55mm F1.8 ZA

Bugs Corrected in Lightroom 5.3

Issues when upgrading catalog from previous versions of Lightroom.

Incorrect photos are displayed after switching away from a Publish Collection.

Catalog optimization did not finish, and was not optimizing the catalog

Feather of clone spots is set to 0 after upgrading catalog to Lightroom 5.

Auto White Balance settings are not saved to Snapshots.

Sony 18-55mm lens is detected as the Hasselblad 18-55mm lens for lens correction.

Increased Update Spot Removal history steps when in Before and After view.

Slideshows start playing automatically even when the Manual Slideshow option is enabled.

A few weeks ago we had Tigz Rice a UK Boudoir photographer in the Adobe UK studio. I had the opportunity to talk with Tigz about her creative workflow when she is retouching using both Lightroom and Photoshop, but also, the tools that she uses, as well as how she is using social networks to raise he profile in the photographic community.

We hope you enjoy this video and we are already thinking about the next one’s, so please let us know what you want to see and hear and we will do our best to accommodate!